Boys on the bus are back

At The New York Times, Jill Abramson is out and Dean Baquet is in. On the same day across the pond, Natalie Nougayrede was so tired of personal attacks she quit her top post at Le Monde. And at Bloomberg, half-a-dozen men have been put in key positions over Washington coverage, after the first woman to run the bureau left earlier this year.

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A new report out this week wasn’t kidding: Journalism has a woman problem.

“Some of the very qualities that make for great top-level editors, such as firm decision-making ability and willingness to stand up for your point of view against competing interests — are qualities that are often lauded in men and seen as overly abrasive in women,” said Ann Friedman, former deputy editor of The American Prospect. “I think it’s possible for male and female bosses to be both decisive and compassionate, both powerful and well-liked. But we are harder on women who don’t manage — or perhaps don’t even try — to be all of these things at once.”

The Women’s Media Center found that men still dominate the media industry, from bylines to leadership positions to editorial page writers to guests on the Sunday news shows.

The stats help explain why there was such a visceral reaction to Abramson’s fall and Nougayrede’s departure Wednesday among many women in the field.

Former sports reporter Melissa Ludtke, who pushed through the courts for Major League Baseball to allow women sports reporters equal access to locker rooms, said that it’s clear gender is still an issue in newsrooms and that now the problem has moved from the courts to a more nuanced problem.

“I think what it says to us is there is still enormous challenges for women out there, for women who assume those key and influential roles in journalism,” Ludtke said. “It’s tougher. It’s not a situation where you can point to the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment … We’re in a different zone and how you change attitudes and how you change practices that come out of those attitudes is a whole new challenge for this generation and a challenge that they have to meet without the women’s movement behind them.”

Liza Mundy, an author and former newspaper editor, wrote an opinion article for The New York Times last week on the report, reminiscing about the time she interviewed to become the managing editor of The Washington Post Sunday Magazine. Her biggest hurdle: remembering which senior editors were named Peter — and which weren’t.

“It’s been 20 years,” Mundy wrote, “but things haven’t changed as much as we might expect.”

In supervisory positions at the country’s top newspapers, 34.6 percent are held by women, according to the report.

Abramson was a trailblazer for this reason. She rose through the ranks at The New York Times to serve as the first woman executive editor.

The paper’s publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., told staff that there was “an issue with management in the newsroom,” but he did not elaborate.

At a meeting Wednesday, national editor Alison Mitchell and assistant managing editor Susan Chira told Sulzberger that the decision would not sit well with women in the newsroom who view her as a role model, Capital New York reported.

Capital New York paraphrased his response: When women get to top management positions, they are sometimes fired, just as men are.

Abramson’s unexpected departure — she was at the helm just three years — sent shock waves inside and outside the paper.

Abramson noted her push for diversity during her tenure. “Our masthead became half female for the first time, and so many great women hold important newsroom positions,” said Abramson in a news release.